"I try not to listen, but it hurts when they make fun of me," Tere says to her friend Alicia. She feels like an outsider, that she does not belong with her classmates. As "American Girls" develops, Tere comes to realize that she is an American girl—just as American as her classmates who speak English with ease. It is this central idea, the main theme, that ties the story's events together. As Tere's character grows, she realizes that she may be an immigrant and have trouble with her English, but she is an American girl, regardless.

"It's not as if I'm dumb," says Tere, and there is ample evidence that she is intelligent, that difficulty speaking English makes her feel as though others must think her dumb. "It seemed every time she opened her mouth in class, the sounds came out wrong...